Artist Biography
Balancing a career in medicine with a deep creative practice, Derrick Wansom is a photographer based in Austin whose work explores the interplay of emotion, memory, and perception. Working across digital, film, and Polaroid media, his photography aims to reach beyond representation and capture emotion and feeling.
What began as a fascination with the sculptural beauty and storytelling of classic cars evolved into a meditation on the fluid nature of reality itself. His subjects now span from abstract compositions and architectural studies to street, travel, music, and event photography - unified by a visceral pursuit of emotional truth.
Favoring natural light, unrehearsed settings, and Polaroid formats, he embraces imperfection as part of the process. Whether through camera movement, long exposures, film manipulation, or film irregularities, his approach invites the unpredictable to guide the image. This transforms the act of capturing images as a way to surrender control and translate feeling into visual form.
His work has been featured in multiple local and international exhibitions, independent publications, and zines. Through co-founding Negative Space, an Austin-based photography collective, he continues to fuel the same creative community that shaped his evolution.
Trippin
2024 | Giclée Print
Luftgekühlt
2024 | Giclée Print
Envy
2024 | Polaroid
Artist Statement
My work drifts in the space between perception and emotion, where light dissolves into feeling and time folds upon itself. I use photography as a form of discovery: a dialogue between light, time, and intuition that follows the invisible currents shaping reality’s surface.
Each image begins as an observation and becomes a meditation on presence and impermanence. I look for moments that hover between clarity and dissolution, where what is seen gives way to what is felt. My photography is a means of deep connection, a way to engage with the world as it unfolds and to glimpse how reality shifts according to the way we choose to look.